


au revoir.

by deadeyedwritergirl



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, M/M, Mentions of a Minor Character Death, Post-Break Up, Quite a bit of angst actually, kid!fic kinda, mentions of an original ziam kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15722037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadeyedwritergirl/pseuds/deadeyedwritergirl
Summary: “You can’t keep calling me like this, Liam.”That was the first thing Zayn said when he picked up. Liam wasn’t even offended by his resigned sigh or his slightly annoyed tone. He was just happy that he’d picked up at all.**Or the one where Zayn and Liam have lost too much to come back from it.





	au revoir.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This fic is a completely made up scenario with no basis in reality whatsoever. I do not know Zayn or Liam or anything about their lives. This is purely for your entertainment and enjoyment. Nothing more.

_“We’ll find other pieces to the puzzles”_

“You can’t keep calling me like this, Liam.”

That was the first thing Zayn said when he picked up. Liam wasn’t even offended by his resigned sigh or his slightly annoyed tone. He was just happy that he’d picked up at all.

The last time Liam had dialled Zayn up at an ungodly hour of the night, driven by nostalgia and loneliness, Zayn had sworn he wouldn’t answer to him next time. But he did, and that thought alone did something for him.

“Then why’d you pick up?” he challenged.

Zayn took a breath like he was about to answer, but then must have thought better of it because instead of words, another sigh fell from his lips and crackled through the phone.

What do you want, Liam?” Zayn asked when Liam was silent too long because he’d gotten lost in the sound of his breaths through the phone. He was counting them, listening carefully so he could try sync his own with Zayn’s because that’s the only way breathing felt...right. Breathing felt right only when his breaths were in time with Zayn’s, the way they used to be when they were _Zayn &Liam_.

That’s what he wanted. He wanted to feel whole again. He wanted to feel right and he wanted to feel human again. He didn’t want to feel like this black hole void that was collapsing in on itself. For a while it had been feeling like every good thing was being swallowed up in the sadness, leaving him desolate and hollow. Speaking to Zayn helped him. It returned the feeling to his chest, kind of like that prickly feeling of pins and needles. It was painful but necessary. Necessary so that he wouldn’t lose his mind. It got rid of the numb feeling and made him feel alive again because for the few minutes that Zayn would speak to him he could feel like they were still together and he hadn’t been discarded like something worthless.

“You’re edgy. Is he there?”

He hated to bring _him_ up in the little time he had Zayn on the line, but that age-old feeling, that green-eyed monster that Shakespeare had warned about, had reared its head and he’d had to spit the question out to satisfy his curiosity and keep himself from wondering about it all night. Liam didn’t even know his name, only that he hated him for being where he should be, with Zayn.

“Liam,” Zayn warned.

“What? I just want to know Zayn. Aren’t I allowed that much, at least?”

“Don’t go there, please. Not tonight,” he was begging now, as much as Liam wanted to oblige and give Zayn what he wanted, something in him, something sinister, something hurt, wanted to spread its poison and Zayn became the target.

“Why? Are you having a bad night? Join the club, except it’s felt like one very long, very bad night for me ever since-”

“Ever since what, Liam? Ever since I ‘threw’ you away? That’s the word you used last time, isn’t it? That I just threw you away like a worthless piece of rubbish?” Zayn’s tone was cold and seething as he spoke into the phone. He didn’t need to shout to get it across to Liam that he was angry.

That tone, those words, they stopped something vital in Liam’s organs and made it feel like they were all shutting down in protest of the jolt of heartache that shot through him.

“I don’t know how you remember it, but only one of us packed their bags and walked out that night, Liam...and it wasn’t me.”

“You let me,” Liam argued, finally saying what he’d been trying to say in all those late night phone calls to his ex.

“I _let_ you?” Zayn asked incredulously like Liam had just proclaimed that the sky outside was purple. “I begged you not to go and you still left,” he spat out.

There was a long silence as they each took stock of what was broken and wondered whether or not it was irreparable.

“You know, I have listened to you moan at me for weeks, blaming me for how it ended between us. Part of me kept taking your calls because I felt like I deserved it. I felt like I really was to blame. Not anymore, Li. Yours wasn’t the only heartbroken that night. Mine was too. I had just lost our son too, I couldn’t run after you when I could barely figure out how to keep standing.”

“Don’t bring him up. You can’t bring him up. Not like this,” Liam pleaded.

“You wouldn’t even say his name for months after he died and I felt so guilty because I-”

“Zayn, stop! STOP IT!” Liam all but shouted into the phone. The air felt like it was escaping his chest too quickly for it to feel like the relief it should have been to his deprived lungs.

“I should have strapped him in tighter, secured the car seat, checked and double checked...but I was in such a hurry to get home and I-”

“Why are you doing this?” Liam asked, breathless from the pain.

“For the same reason you keep calling me, Li. To get closure. We never got that, did we? You wouldn’t let me talk about it and I’ve just carried this guilt around with me since. But you need to hear it as much as I need to say it: he died, Liam. It was an accident.”

“Zayn, stop!” The words were barely a whisper that Liam gasped out in his despair. “You’re hurting me.”

“I’m sorry Li, but Kai’s gone. Not talking about it, not accepting it, won’t bring him back,” Zayn said softly.

“I know that. I swear I do,” he choked out over the tears he was trying to hold back. He hadn’t heard the sound of Kai’s name in such a long time that hearing it from Zayn’s mouth felt like the re-opening of a barely healed wound. It was an unbearable re-injury.

“It’s just...it still hurts so much. That’s why I couldn’t be there, in that house with memories of him lingering in every room. And you wanted to replace him, Zayn. You wanted to replace our son.”

A heavy silence fell between them, even through the phone line, it felt almost palpable.

It was the first time he had ever confessed that, to himself or out loud. He’d never been able to think this much about the death of their son before. Every time he would start to he would shut it off because it felt too much like part of himself was dying an excruciating death over and over again.

Zayn had tried to get him to open up before, the night their relationship had ended. They’d sat down and gone through the what-ifs and the should-haves and it hadn’t helped either of them. It didn’t bring their son back, instead, it had felt like they were losing their will to live or to love, Liam didn’t know which because he’d so long equated the two. So instead of sitting there and watching their relationship deteriorate on top of everything he’d already lost, he’d gotten up, packed a bag and left.

He hadn’t intended for it to be the end. He’d just needed to escape the pain contained within the walls of that house. He’d been thinking only about himself though, this he only realised in retrospect.

He’d been so wrapped up in his own grief and loss that he’d completely missed Zayn beating himself up about the accident. He hadn’t thought about what his husband might have needed, that he hadn’t said out loud that he didn’t blame him. He’d dropped the ball on that one, he failed his husband at a time when he’d needed him most.

“I wasn’t trying to replace him. I suggested adopting again because I just, I wanted the void to go away. I wanted you to be okay again and I wanted a do-over, I guess. I thought it would make everything right again.”

“So is that what it is with _him_ , then? A do-over?” He’d managed to recollect himself enough to keep the jealousy that wanted to sneak a sneer into the question at bay.

“Liam,”

"No, tell me. I want to know.”

“Maybe.”

The admission didn’t feel the way Liam had expected it to. He’d wanted to feel vindicated somehow, he’d thought the resentment might fade a little with knowing that the man Zayn was with was just a means to an end. Instead, it felt wrong to have let things between Zayn and he come to this.

“What do you want from me, Liam? I don’t know what you want from me,” Zayn prompted him, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“Why do you keep calling me like this? I can’t apologise any more than I already have,” Zayn continued quietly, sounding resigned and so tired.

“I don’t need you to apologise. I don’t blame you for what happened to our son, Zayn. I never did.”

He finally said the words that had kept the rift between them wide. Almost instantaneously he felt like he’d bridged a little of the space between them.

“Thank you,” Zayn said after a long moment of silence. His voice broke over the words, the emotion spilling out and into the speaker. “But you’ve got to tell me what you want, Liam, because we can’t go on like this.”

“I – I don’t know what I want,” he admitted, “I guess I just can’t let go.”

It was a realisation he’d come to in the course of their conversation. He was still tethered to all of the anger, the pain of having lost Kai and to Zayn. Maybe those things weren’t even separate. Maybe somewhere in the wreckage of the past months all of it had somehow melted together into one until he couldn’t pick them apart.

“Well, I can’t hold on, Liam. It took me too long to figure out how to forgive myself for what happened to our son and you take me back there, back to a place that I just can’t go anymore.”

“Zayn…” he pleaded because he knew Zayn too well. They’d been married for years – before last month when the divorce had finally gone through. He knew him well enough to know that that hardened timbre in Zayn’s voice that stung like a hot poker through the chest was resolve. A resolve that Liam sensed wouldn’t be in his favour.

“No, Liam. I can’t keep taking your calls. I’m serious this time. I need to let you go for my own sanity. You should let go too.”

Liam barely had a moment to process the words before the piercing dial tone brought him back to the ruins of his reality with a finality that he felt uncomfortable acknowledging.

The devastation that settled in his bones felt familiar as he slid his phone away from himself, a futile attempt at protecting himself from a moment that had already happened and he couldn’t take back.

He’d lived this moment before, the same forlornness and the same feeling of loss and grief, there was just a different face attached to it this time. Before it had been his son that he had lost, this time it was his husband.

It was the second time, in less than a year that he’d lost a part of himself and had been robbed of the chance to say goodbye properly and say how much he loved them, both Zayn and Kai, before he lost them.

It felt like one of those moments that retrospect might teach him to appreciate, but at that moment he was left to wonder how he’d sleep with the gaping hole in his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I promise I love Ziam and I hate breaking them up in every fic I write but the angst is just ingrained in my bones.
> 
> Please leave comments if you enjoy this fic. I'll take kudos to if you'd rather just do that, But please leave comments. I love comments. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
